Characteristics of Injectable Contraceptive Users In a Low-Income Population in Texas

Among 600 women at 17 family planning clinics in Texas who expressed
interest in using the hormonal injectable depot medroxyprogesterone
acetate (DMPA), 536 (89%) actually received the injectable. Thirty percent
of the DMPA recipients were younger than 21 and 77% were not married. The
average numbers of pregnancies and births were 1.9 and 1.2 per woman;
one-third of the women had had at least one abortion. The majority of
women receiving DMPA (66%) were using it to space births. Their main
sources of information about the method were friends (42%) and health care
providers (37%), and the most commonly reported reason for its use was
dissatisfaction with previous contraceptive methods.